Cultivating a Generalist Mindset for the New Era

Not an expert at anything? Maybe that’s a good thing.

This blog post is now a podcast episode!

I had a friend who said one day, apropos of nothing, “I want to be an expert. I don’t care what in, I just want to be an expert in something.” I wish I’d asked him then what it was about being an expert that he desired. I can’t ask him now, because he’s passed away, and I don’t know if he ever became an expert in anything. But I’ll always remember that offhand comment, because in a way, I understood what he meant. We admire experts in our society, as well we should. Most spend years learning their subject and know what they’re talking about. We should be listening to them. Except we often favor experts, i.e. specialists, at the expense of generalists, and that’s problematic, because generalists have so much to offer, especially now.

Generalists don’t have much cachet in our society. Even the term “generalist” sounds inferior, doesn’t it? It has that flavor of the dilettante about it: jack of all trades, master of none. Unfortunately, we tend to see generalists as people who haven’t put the time and commitment into becoming a specialist, perhaps because they’re too lazy or scatterbrained. But what if generalism is actually its own brand of specialist knowledge? What if generalists are valuable because they’re not experts in one specific area? Should we all be trying to cultivate a generalist mindset?

I think we should, and here’s why. The world is changing, and along with it, all the rules. We’re in an era of tremendous shift: our former reality is dying and a new one is forming. We all feel it, and most of us are scared. But if you have multiple talents and interests, you have a greater chance of thriving. The old world was set up for specialists. We were expected to specialize, each a cog in the machine. And now that machine is becoming obsolete. The highly specialized cogs, the ones that are only good at doing that one thing they were constructed to do, aren’t going to fare so well. Generalists will have an easier time repurposing their talents to match circumstances.

Here’s the good news: we are all natural generalists. We are all multitalented, but we’re not trained to see ourselves that way. Not sure what you have to offer the world? You’re already doing it, I can guarantee you. Take a look at your life, the activities you come back to again and again, that you’ve committed time and energy to. What do you always want to learn more about? What do you spend money you don’t have on? And perhaps most importantly, what do you find yourself “wasting” time on? It may not be obvious at first how it all fits together. Let me give you an example.

The generalist Tim Ferriss, most known for his enormously popular podcast and his bestseller The 4-Hour Work Week, found his first success with a sports supplement company he started from scratch. As a college student he used to mix up his own supplement powders from specialized mail-order ingredients. He combined this interest with skills and contacts he gained from a sales job he had at an IT firm just before the dot-com bust. But here’s the cool part. It wasn’t the sales job that made him so good getting people to buy his product. It was insomnia. As a kid, he couldn’t sleep, and he’d watch TV all night. And what’s on TV at night? Infomercials. He became obsessed with sales techniques, even calling up the companies to see how they attempted to close the deal once they had you on the phone. Because Tim Ferriss had insomnia and wasted all that time watching useless late-night television, and because he was obsessed with supplement formulas, he was able to become a successful entrepreneur.

What are you wasting your time, energy, or money on? What are the useless things in your life that might not actually be so useless?

Here’s the secret successful generalists understand: what you have to offer the world isn’t any one particular skill, talent, or area of knowledge, or even a combination of them. What you have to offer is YOU. Your whole self. You are your own brand. And what that means is that everything about your life is valuable in terms of the skills, knowledge, and experience it confers. Your job is to learn how to see it that way, how to value yourself and your experiences in a way that allows you to put it all together and manifest that in the world. Trust yourself. Follow your curiosity. Pay attention to your obsessions. And don’t ignore your wasted time and useless pastimes. All of it is you, and therefore all of it has value.